Why do evangelicals become ex-evangelicals? The answers vary: some leave because they have been wounded by unwise or even abusive leaders, or maybe there is just a long, slow drifting away.
Why do evangelicals become ex-evangelicals? The answers vary: some leave because they have been wounded by unwise or even abusive leaders; others depart because they come to doubt the truthfulness of Scripture; for still many more, there is no one obvious reason, just a long, slow drifting away. But for a significant number of ex-evangelicals, their disillusionment is not about religious apathy or aversion but, rather, quite the opposite. The ex-evangelicals I am thinking of here are those who hunger for something more in their religious experience—more depth, more seriousness, more spiritual engagement—and become convinced that such things are not to be found within the evangelical tradition. They want genuine spiritual formation but fear that the evangelical cupboard is bare. So instead of becoming agnostics or joining liberal mainline Protestant churches, they turn to other traditions—notably Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy—convinced that these traditions foster the sort of spiritual growth that had eluded them as evangelicals.
This phenomenon was recently highlighted in a widely shared article in the New York Post, which profiled converts to Eastern Orthodoxy. One such individual is Elijah Wee Sit, who was raised as an evangelical but now dismisses “modern Christianity” as unacceptably “watered down.” Reflecting, presumably, on the evangelicalism that he experienced growing up, he describes this “watered down” faith as follows: “People go to church on Sunday, they sing a few songs, they listen to an hour-long sermon that seems more like a TED talk, and then they go home, and they just go on with their lives.”1
Similarly, in his recent book Living in Wonder, bestselling Eastern Orthodox author Rod Dreher muses on the experience of American Christians who become dissatisfied with a felt lack of spiritual depth and begin wondering whether the ancient and medieval traditions of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy might point toward a more excellent way:
On summer vacations, Americans sometimes venture to Europe, visit the great medieval cathedrals, and wonder about the kind of faith that could raise such temples to God's glory from societies that were poorer than our own. We read old tales of miracles, visions, pilgrimages, and religious feasts and feel the poverty of our own religious experience. We dutifully drag ourselves to church on Sunday, we read our Bibles, we follow the law, we work to serve our nation or our community, we stay current with our reading, but we still may wonder, Is this all there is?2
That last question captures the sense among some evangelicals that there is something lacking, paltry, and underdeveloped within the evangelical spiritual tradition: Is this all there is? Does evangelicalism actually possess the resources and tools to support a robust and sustained experience of spiritual formation and Christian growth?
And whatever one makes of the varied answers given in response, one cannot dismiss the significance of the question itself. One of the most basic biblical assumptions about the Christian life is that it will be a growing life. Whether depicting the blessed life as that of “a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season” (Ps. 1:3) or portraying believers as “newborn infants” who “long for the pure spiritual milk” of God’s word so “so that by it” they “may grow up into salvation” (1 Pet. 2:2), the Bible assumes throughout that authentic spiritual life is marked by development, maturation, and growth.
The How Question
But as clear as that might be, what sometimes feels less clear is the how question: How do I nurture and sustain the sort of spiritual formation that the Bible clearly calls me to? Among evangelical Christians, answering such questions about personal spiritual growth has sometimes been complicated by the movement’s frequent emphasis on growth of other kinds, namely numerical growth and geographic spread. Rooted in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, evangelical Christianity has always prioritized a zeal to see the gospel spread to more people and more places. Innovative evangelists like John Wesley (1703–1791) and George Whitefield (1714–1770) took their sermons outside the church walls to reach constituencies that their more traditional contemporaries were neglecting. And in our own day, evangelicals continue to work tirelessly and creatively to reach ever-wider circles with the gospel.
This, of course, is a good thing. The risen Jesus told his disciples, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Evangelical Christians have taken that mandate seriously, and we should thank God for their witness. And yet, as is so often the case in a fallen world, even insights that are good and right and true can fog up our windows when they are emphasized to the exclusion of other insights that are likewise good and right and true. In the case of evangelicalism, the movement’s zeal for expansion and outward growth has sometimes come at the expense of discipleship and inward depth.
One of the most basic biblical assumptions about the Christian life is that it will be a growing life.
The famed evangelist Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) captured an important aspect of evangelicalism’s historic DNA when he declared, “It makes no difference how you get a man to God, provided you get him there.”3 Surely one can applaud the evangelistic passion in that statement while still recognizing that an unrestrained and ultimately counterproductive pragmatism lies close at hand. When pragmatism pushes out principle, the result is a Christianity long on excitement and short on spiritual maturity. As evangelical theologian and author David Wells has put it, “What results, all too often, beneath all the smiling crowds, the packed auditoria, is a faith so cramped, limited, and minuscule as to be entirely unable to command our life, our energies, or, as a matter of fact, even much of our attention.”4 If that description accurately reflects the evangelical experience of the ex-evangelicals who now seek spiritual depth through Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, then one can’t help but sympathize with their decision to leave, even if we ultimately disagree.
I don’t question that some expressions of evangelical Christianity lack depth. But what I do question is the assumption that such shallowness is in any way intrinsic to the logic of the evangelical tradition itself. My confidence on this point comes not from surveying current practices among contemporary evangelicals but, rather, from looking backward to the Protestant Reformation tradition out of which evangelicalism arose and to which evangelicalism is theologically indebted.
The Reformers and their heirs were committed to reforming not just theology but also their approach to the practice of the Christian life. They sought an approach to spiritual formation that was deeply rooted in Scripture, understanding both that any God-honoring spiritual practices must be derived from Scripture and that God’s word itself is the primary means through which the Lord shapes his people. Over and against a medieval tradition that effectively sidelined personal engagement with the Bible in favor of pilgrimages, relics, and a host of practices that were, at best, extrabiblical, the Reformers understood that living, growing faith was a word-based affair: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (Col. 3:16).
In support of this end, Reformers like John Calvin (1509–1564), post-Reformation pastor-theologians like the English Puritans, and later exemplars like the eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) all wrote extensively on the how question that sometimes feels so elusive. Our problem, then, as evangelicals is not that we lack a tradition of spiritual formation but, rather, that we often have failed to notice that it was there. As the secular culture becomes increasingly hostile to the historic Christian faith, believers who wish to stand firm will need to become more intentional than ever in their pursuit of authentic spiritual formation. For some evangelicals, this desire for depth will sadly lead them away from Protestantism and towards religious practices that find no basis in Scripture. But for those who wish to find it, there is a rich heritage of word-based spirituality right here at home.
Matthew C. Bingham (PhD, Queen’s University Belfast) is vice president of academic affairs and associate professor of church history at Phoenix Seminary in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is the author of Orthodox Radicals: Baptist Identity in the English Revolution and has served as a pastor in the United States and Northern Ireland. Matthew is married to Shelley, and they have four children.
There is a lot of overlap in the convictions that Protestants and Catholics have on a lot of deeply controversial moral and ethical issues in our society.
Imagine the hands of thirteen men at the Last Supper—twenty-six hands passing the bread, passing the cup, running fingers through hair, wiping crumbs from beards, one moment on the lap, the next on the table.
Imagine the hands of thirteen men at the Last Supper—twenty-six hands passing the bread, passing the cup, running fingers through hair, wiping crumbs from beards, one moment on the lap, the next on the table.
Jesus then remarks, “Behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table” (Luke 22:21). The hands immediately slip back.
These words, spoken at what Jesus knows to be His last Passover meal, send a shock through His twelve disciples. Each man looks around at every other. Which one of them did He mean? There were so many hands there that evening!
A Mystery
If we have read the Gospel of Luke from the beginning, we already know the culprit: “Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor” (Luke 6:16). It had already happened that “Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was of the number of the twelve. He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray him to them” (Luke 22:3–4). Through all of history since then, Judas’s name has been mud, and few people today read of his betrayal with any surprise.
Yet to eleven of the men at that table, it was a surprise: “They began to question one another, which of them it could be who was going to do this” (Luke 22:23). It doesn’t say, “And all eyes turned to Judas.” They hadn’t a clue! Judas was adept at hiding what was going on inside. He had moved in their company and managed to disguise his treachery from those who were nearest and dearest to him.
It’s very easy for us to hide from one another. It’s very easy to disguise what’s going on in the heart. We may assume that we know each other very well, but who really knows the thoughts of a man or a woman except the spirit that is within them? (1 Cor. 2:11).
A Solemn Reminder
Judas’s deceit is a solemn reminder that we can fool each other, and we can fool ourselves. Jesus warned the disciples that there will be those at the last judgment who will be able to say to the Lord, “We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets,” yet he will say to them, “I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!” (Luke 13:26–27).
The issue at the heart of being Jesus’ disciple is not whether we like sermons, attend talks, or are members of a church. The real issue is whether there has been a genuine encounter with the living God in the Lord Jesus Christ. Tragically, there will be some in our churches to whom the Lord will say, “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know where you are from.”
Judas was adept at hiding what was going on inside.
Paul described this dynamic to the leaders of the Ephesian church: “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29–30; emphasis added). In other words: “The danger isn’t just from those outside your group; it is from those inside who have the right language and show up in the right places at the right time, but they are still slaves of sin. They will prey on the brothers and sisters. It may be you.”
A Deliberate Attention
The solution to this predicament is not paranoia and mutual distrust. It is to “pay careful attention” (Acts 20:28), to “take heed” (KJV), to “keep watch” (NIV). Pay attention to what? “To yourselves and to all the flock,” says Paul. This is why the oversight of godly elders in a local body is crucial. It’s why the scrutiny and accountability of church membership is necessary. It’s why the teaching of biblical doctrine is indispensable. It’s why church discipline is merciful. And, of course, it’s why each man and woman must cry out in the secret place,
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Ps. 139:23–24)
On that historic night, two hands on the table night belonged to a traitor who had traveled with the Lord but whose heart loved the world. Two other hands belonged to the Savior, soon to be nailed to the tree. Twenty-two belonged to those who would be found covering their faces as they huddled in their hiding places.
Yet in the mercy of God, the twenty-two would again grasp the plow as they looked forward to the Lord’s promise of the kingdom: “You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:28–30). How would they do this? By clinging in faith to the Lord who bought them with His blood, by walking in the power of the Spirit who sanctified them, and by keeping careful watch of themselves.
This article was adapted from the sermon “Betrayal” by Alistair Begg.
I’ve heard it said, “God will accept me because I know I’m a good person.” Our culture loves to celebrate that humans are basically good, not sinful. If a human does something that’s harmful, then it must be because of a complex of sociological factors that negatively affected that person. Our culture just despises the idea of sin, of breaking moral rules from God, and if there is a God, you can earn his approval by living well.
Here’s an example. Michael Bloomberg is one of the richest people in the world. He was mayor of New York City for three terms, from 2002 to 2013. Four months after he finished his terms as governor, The New York Times published a story about him. The story says that if Bloomberg senses that he may not have as much time left as he would like, he has little doubt about what would await him at a judgment day. Bloomberg thinks he has earned God’s favor on the basis of his work on gun safety, obesity, and smoking cessation.
And he said, with a grin, “I’m telling you, if there is a God, when I get to heaven, I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I’m heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.” That’s a tragedy. How many people today think like that? How many people think they can earn God’s approval by how they live? The truth is that you’re not good. You are bad.
The Bible says, “None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together, they have become worthless. No one does good. Not even one.” That’s Romans 3:10–12. So if people aren’t bad, then the good news isn’t good. The good news is only as good as the bad news is bad. And the bad news is really bad. Namely, we deserve God’s wrath because we have rebelled against our Creator.
Andrew David Naselli (PhD, Bob Jones University; PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is professor of systematic theology and New Testament at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis. He is planting Christ the King Church in Stillwater, Minnesota.
“The Bible is God’s love letter to us.” I can see where that’s coming from. It’s not a hundred percent wrong. It’s just that it’s probably not a big enough statement about what the Bible is.
All ye that pass by, to Jesus draw nigh; To you is it nothing that Jesus should die? Your ransom and peace, your surety He is; Come, see if there ever was sorrow like His.
All ye that pass by, to Jesus draw nigh; To you is it nothing that Jesus should die? Your ransom and peace, your surety He is; Come, see if there ever was sorrow like His.
For what you have done His blood must atone; The Father hath punished for you His dear Son. The Lord, in the day of His anger, did lay Your sins on the Lamb, and He bore them away.
He answered for all; oh, come at His call, And low at His cross with astonishment fall! But lift up your eyes at Jesus’ cries: Impassive, He suffers; immortal, He dies.
He dies to atone for sins not His own; Your debt He hath paid, and your work He hath done. Ye all may receive the peace He did leave Who made intercession, “My Father, forgive!”
For you and for me He prayed on the tree; The prayer is accepted, the sinner is free. That sinner am I, who on Jesus rely And come for the pardon God cannot deny.
My pardon I claim; for a sinner I am, A sinner believing in Jesus’ name. He purchased the grace which now I embrace; O Father, Thou know’st He hath died in my place.
His death is my plea; my advocate see, And hear the blood speak that hath answered for me. My ransom He was when He bled on the cross, And losing His life, He hath carried my cause.
The book of Acts is set within the larger story of the outworking of God’s plan to save for Himself a people from every nation––the story that runs from Genesis to Revelation. In Saved: Experiencing the Promise of the Book of Acts, author Nancy Guthrie provides an easy-to-read, theologically insightful guide to this important book in Scripture.
The book of Acts is set within the larger story of the outworking of God’s plan to save for Himself a people from every nation––the story that runs from Genesis to Revelation. In Saved: Experiencing the Promise of the Book of Acts, author Nancy Guthrie provides an easy-to-read, theologically insightful guide to this important book in Scripture.
Saved is a chapter-by-chapter companion to the book of Acts that will help you more deeply understand how the Spirit of God was at work in the lives of the apostles in the days following the resurrection and ascension. In the first part of Saved, Guthrie looks closely at the apostle Peter and observes how the Holy Spirit transformed him and enabled him to powerfully preach the Gospel and build Christ’s church. In the second half, she focuses on the missionary work of the apostle Paul and the remarkable story of how the message of salvation spread from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and beyond.
You’ll learn how the early church took root and how the Holy Spirit transformed thousands to become followers of Jesus. You’ll also read about the widespread conversion of both Jews and Gentiles and learn how the Holy Spirit continues to work in the same way today.
Saved will help you better understand the key events and important themes in the book of Acts.
This is a must-have study companion to guide you skillfully through all twenty-eight chapters of Acts with helpful commentary and insights.
You Can’t Have a Grandmaster Plan for Life (Or Even Tomorrow)
In this episode, David Gibson discusses the intent, message, and way of life that Ecclesiastes has to teach us. He addresses the negative connotations associated with this book and how Ecclesiastes teaches us how we can know God, love him, and accept the gifts we receive from him.
Matt Tully
David Gibson serves as minister of Trinity Church in Aberdeen, Scotland and is the author of several books, including Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End from Crossway. David, thanks so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.
David Gibson
Such a pleasure, Matt. It’s lovely to get to chat with you again.
Matt Tully
Today we’re going to talk about the book of Ecclesiastes, this really incredible yet somewhat perplexing book in the Bible. And one of the big themes in Ecclesiastes that I want to focus on today is just the uncertainty of life that we all experience. Life doesn’t always go the way that we expect it to go. I think that’s something that we’ve all experienced in our own lives in different ways. Sometimes in really distressing ways, perhaps. So I wonder if we can just start with the big picture. As someone who spent a lot of time in the book of Ecclesiastes, how has it shaped your perspective on those moments in our lives when life does feel random or even out of control?
David Gibson
Yeah, thanks. I think you touch straight away there on probably one of the biggest takeaways from the book, that I think it’s there to help us make sense of those moments. I think it’s part of the wisdom literature that is given to us to help us get our heads around the order that God has put into the world that you see really clearly in the book of Proverbs. Ecclesiastes comes at that order from a different angle and says, yes, the order is there, but what happens when it doesn’t look like it’s there and nothing seems to make sense? I think a lot of where people connect with the book Ecclesiastes is necessarily bound up with our own individual life story. So I’m the eldest child. I'm a typical eldest child. You see these Instagram accounts about this. I follow these guys on Instagram that always do these reels about the different type of kids: the eldest, the middle, and the littlest. And I’m one of three boys, so I see that in my two brothers. Eldest children love order, neatness, tidiness in everything. We work by a schedule. We’re where we’re meant to be. Randomness and things out of control are very infuriating in a way that they’re not for my two other brothers. They’re like, "You’re there to take care of all that stuff. What’s the problem?" So depending on your type of personality and where you are in the world, the book will resonate in different ways. For me, as someone who loves order and tidiness and control, I think I’ve learned, through the book of Ecclesiastes, that God is teaching me that I make an idol out of those things. It’s not just my personality (although it is that); it’s that when my desk is tidy, and my calendar is tidy, and my relationships are neat, and the kids are where I want them to be, and the dog is well behaved, and church is looking good, it’s very possible that I have risen up above my creaturely station and tried to take control of the universe and say that because everything is where I want it to be, God is good. And actually, I’m not really saying that God is good; I’m saying that I am good, and my world is good, and therefore God is good. And the book of Ecclesiastes is there to ask is it possible that love of control is an idol that God is smashing very gently—well, it doesn’t feel gentle—very lovingly, by showing you that you cannot control everything in life? And whether you’re an eldest child or a youngest child, it’s still the same message, that we are creatures who do not run the universe. And the randomness of life, and the things that you can’t control, and your best laid plans that all unravel unexpectedly, and the medical diagnosis you didn’t see coming—all of these things are tools in God’s hand to wake us up to the fact that he is the one running the world, not us. So that’s a long answer to your question, that Ecclesiastes has helped me see more and more that I am a creature. God is the creator, not me.
Matt Tully
You mentioned the book of Proverbs a minute ago, and I think that is one thing that I’ve wrestled with at times is that portions of the book of Proverbs seem to portray a world that is very you do this, and then this will happen. It’s very straightforward math almost. So you kind of know if I give this input, if I act in this way, if I live a wise life or a godly life in this way, then this thing should happen every time. And that feels very much at odds with the message of the book of Ecclesiastes, which seems to say I can live life as wisely as I possibly could, and yet sometimes things will still not turn out for me. So how do you reconcile those two? I think to some it could feel like those are contradictory messages.
David Gibson
Well, you need them both. The second one only feels contradictory because you have the first proverb says, "Do this, and you will live. Do this, and things go better than if you do the opposite." And that’s all completely true. But along comes Ecclesiastes to say—and Proverbs says this, too, but Ecclesiastes says it in a little bit more of a stark form—that yes, you’ve got all those given things about what makes life work well, but don’t forget two things. Don’t forget that you’re doing them in a broken world. Sin has fractured everything. And don’t forget that you’re doing it in a world where you will soon be dead. You are dying, and your lifespan is not very long. You are only here for a short time. Those are the two main angles, I think, and particularly that first one that God has made the world. A friend of mine who did a PhD here at Aberdeen partly on Proverbs said that God has made the world hospitable to wisdom. The world works best the wiser you are. The more of God you have in your life, the more you’ve imbibed the law and the gospel, the wiser you will live and, therefore, the better life will go. And at the same time, Ecclesiastes says, yes, but disaster can overtake you in a moment, because this is a broken and fallen world. So it’s a case of holding both together, Matt, that yes, this will be better if I live this way, and I might be dead tomorrow, because this world is broken and I don’t have any guarantee for the future.
Matt Tully
As you describe it like that, it makes me think of how the book of Ecclesiastes is almost like the asterisk on the book of Proverbs. This is true, generally speaking, but just don’t miss that asterisk. Don’t forget that there are these other two factors, these X factors: we live in a broken world, and we ourselves are going to die. Those impact our experience of our lives.
David Gibson
There’s an Australian Anglican theologian called Graham Goldsworthy, who many of your listeners may know. He has a wonderful book called Gospel and Wisdom, where he talks about how you find and read and know the gospel through the Bible’s wisdom literature. And he breaks the books, and he says Proverbs is about the perception of order, Ecclesiastes is about the confusion of order, and the book of Job is about the hiddenness of order. In some of my teaching I’ve done recently in the wisdom literature, I’ve added in Song of Songs into that and say that Song of Songs is about the ecstasy of order. The really interesting thing in all of that is the word order. Order recurs in all of Goldsworthy’s headings—perception of order, confusion of order, hiddenness of order. And the order comes from the doctrine of creation. To anybody listening, the key to understanding the Bible’s wisdom literature is the doctrine of creation. You cannot get Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Song of Songs right unless you believe God has made the world in a certain way. And it’s because there is a Creator that there is order in the world. It’s because sin has ruined creation that there is confusion of the order. I’ve always just found that a really helpful thing, that the doctrine of creation is the unspoken screen saver. It’s the backdrop to the whole of the wisdom literature.
Matt Tully
You write in this book, "The message of the book of Ecclesiastes is mirrored in the effect of the book." I just found that a very fascinating statement. I wonder if you could unpack a little bit more what you mean by that.
David Gibson
I think the best storytellers—I was trying to think of an example of this, and I couldn’t think of one. It’ll come to me as soon as we click end recording. The best storytellers and the best filmmakers make you feel what they’re trying to tell you on the screen. So Harry Potter, when it’s Voldemort in the woods or whatever, it’s not light and bright and happy music on the screen. It’s dark, it’s foreboding, and it’s matching. The effect is mirroring the message at that particular point. So I think the message of the book of Ecclesiastes is life is really bewildering and perplexing and will leave you scratching your head and you don’t know where you are. You don’t know which way is up. So if that’s the message of the book, what an incredibly skillful teacher the teacher of the book is to write a book that leaves you scratching your head. How many people have you spoken to who say, "I steer clear of Ecclesiastes. I don’t know how to make sense of Ecclesiastes." What an amazing effect, if the point of the book is that we don't easily know how to make sense of life. So I think that that’s what I’m getting at in that sentence. It’s a very skillful thing to write a book that leaves you scratching your head to teach you that life leaves you scratching your head.
Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful encouragement to us as we approach a book that, yeah, does sometimes feel hard to understand. It feels a little bit inscrutable in certain points. And I hear you saying that that is part of the point, that the book was actually intentionally designed to be a little bit difficult to penetrate, because that reflects the way that life often is difficult for us to penetrate.
David Gibson
Yeah, exactly. And this is controversial, but I think that’s reflected in a lot of the scholarship of Ecclesiastes, that a lot of Christian scholars feel they have to compensate for the perplexity. And there are all sorts of different theories, most of them that I disagree with, about bits of the book that are unorthodox—"no believer would say this." And I don’t think that’s right, and I think that’s the shock of the book. It’s meant to make you stop in your tracks and say, "Hang on. I thought this was the Bible I’m reading." Anthony Thistelton, who was a New Testament scholar, he says that wisdom literature, and I think this is particularly Ecclesiastes, wisdom literature wounds from behind. It’s the sucker punch, the punch in the back that you didn’t see coming that leaves you blinking in the sunlight, thinking hHang on, what is this? That’s part of the unique contribution that Ecclesiastes makes in the canon.
Matt Tully
There are many different ways that we experience this uncertainty of life, these unexpected turns in our lives that leave us feeling sucker punched. There are a lot of different angles on that that we could explore, but I wanted to pick maybe three broad categories of these and see if you can help us understand what this book can help us learn about these ways that we experience life’s uncertainty. The first one is just that understanding that we don’t have control over the things that happen to us. This is going to come in all different ways. I know for me, I can look back on my life and I can just see so many small moments that happen, things that I either had very little control over or maybe had literally no control over, that then had really big repercussions for me that maybe made a huge impact on my life. And there’s obviously lots of good examples of that in our lives, lots of wonderful happen-stances, so to speak, that then led to good things. But I think we can all probably think of small moments that led to really difficult, hard things in our lives. As you think about your own life, can you think of examples of that—these small moments that you had no control over that then ended up having a big impact on the rest of your life?
David Gibson
One hundred percent. I can think of loads and loads of different things. I’m married to the most amazing woman in the world, who I messed around at university, who I treated badly. And we met on a summer evening in our college days. She was cycling home, and I happened to be walking back a particular way that evening that led to a conversation that began my humble pie journey of saying to her, "Have I missed the boat?" And we didn’t plan to be there. Then all of a sudden, our whole lives are now meshed together, and we have four kids and a church, and we’re living in this part of the world and not another part. I think Ecclesiastes is just all about that. But here’s how it does it. Ecclesiastes has a beautiful doctrine of God. We can talk about that. It’s actually very rich in the way that it describes God. But it helps you see who God is mostly, I think, by showing us who we are. We are creatures, not the Creator. That, I think, is the main message of Ecclesiastes. It has one of the richest anthropologies in the Bible. It’s got a doctrine of man that sheds light on who God is. Because the fundamental human condition ever since the garden is that we think we are God. That’s what the serpent offered our first parents, wasn’t it? That if you do this, you will be like God. I say this in my book, that my wife will tell you I’m pretty keen on that idea of being God. It surfaces in all sorts of ways, and Ecclesiastes is there to say just take a minute to look at your life—those happen-stances and everything that you mentioned. If you stop and unpack your life, most of the really, really significant decisions and things about you, you didn’t decide and you had no control over. Or even if you did decide, you didn’t realize what you were contributing to. It led to this that you didn’t see coming and all the unintended consequences. Stop thinking that you’re like Garry Kasparov, or whoever those Chess players are, that you’re sitting there with a grand map of your life and the universe and everything. We’re not. We’re small bit-part players who barely know what we’re doing tomorrow, nevermind how we’re going to shape the universe in the future. And Ecclesiastes is just a beautifully humbling book to say, What do most of us think we’re like? We think we’re like castles. We think we’re like granite. We think we’re skyscrapers. We think we are individual Babel towers, going to reach up to the heavens, change the world, and live forever. And Ecclesiastes says, no, I’ve seen people like you before. You’re like the mist that was there on my grass in the morning. And it’s now two o’clock in the day, and you’re like the dew, and it’s gone. It’s just evaporated. That’s what you’re like. You’ll be here for seventy years. Tomorrow no one will remember you were there. That’s what I mean by it being a book about God by teaching us who we are. It puts us in our proper place.
Matt Tully
I love how at the beginning of each chapter of the book you often include little quotes from different figures. And one of the quotes that stood out to me that just is so at odds with, obviously, broader secular culture, perhaps, but even some Christian culture. It’s a Nicholas von Zinzendorf quote: "Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten." That is the true trajectory for most of us. And yet even just the starkness of that, especially the idea of being forgotten, can really cut against the sense of purpose or significance that we all want to feel.
David Gibson
I think it’s when the wisdom literature has wounded you from behind and you catch your breath and you think, What the heck just happened there?—it’s realizing that what the punch in the back has done is put a whole different way of looking at life into your system. So the idea that in 100 years probably no one will know I existed, if you don’t know why that’s a beautiful, beautiful, liberating thing for you, you’re going to struggle with the book of Ecclesiastes, or at least it’s written to teach you why that’s a beautiful thing. Because if you imagine really taking that on board, that in 100, 200, or 300 years no one will know I was even here, well, think about the difference that makes to what I’m trying to achieve today. What am I trying to do? Am I trying to build a legacy today that will last forever? There are occasional people like that. There’s Winston Churchill. There’s US presidents. There are people that God puts in the world who leave an indelible trace. What are they? Maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty people out of billions. If you’re striving to be one of those people, you’re probably not going to be. And that’s God’s way of saying stop overreaching. Stop trying to do more with your life than you were ever meant to do. And if no one’s going to remember you in 100 years, the fact that I have made you, God is saying, that I’ve made you, you’re still worth something. You’re worth an awful lot. But you don’t need to be remembered for your life to have value and meaning. So maybe the value and meaning is not where we think it is.
Matt Tully
Going back to the broad struggle that we have with feeling so powerless to control our lives, to control the future of our lives and just the experience of all the unpredictability that can come our way, you’re talking about it as being almost a comforting thing, as we realize what that tells us about God in contrast to ourselves. But I think the reality is that for many of us, that can feel very unsettling. As we think about that, we think about just my lack of control over what might be coming tomorrow, much less five years from now, it can just feel really scary to think that there’s nothing I really can do, ultimately, to control that. So how would you counsel or encourage or help someone who is saying, "Honestly, that makes me feel very scared"?
David Gibson
It’s a really good question. I think I would say all of life—and I think this as a pastor increasingly—that all of life is the doctrine of God. My fears, my anxieties, my sins, my hopes, my dreams, my struggles—all of them locate me somewhere in relation to who God is and to my understanding of who God is. So I would say that the adult—and I’m fifty this year in December—the adult (that’s someone in my position)—I remember reading John Piper saying that when you’re in your mid forties or fifties, you’ve got the most responsibilities on your shoulders that you’ll ever have. You’re probably a sandwich carer—you’ve got dependents beneath you and you’re starting to get dependents above you. You’re at a point in your career, probably, in work where pressures are increasing. You’ve got increasing responsibilities. And I feel that exactly right, all those things for me personally at the minute. if you’re that kind of person and you don’t locate yourself in relation to God properly, you begin to think, I really am carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I’ve got to make all these decisions. I’ve got a plan the future and all the rest of it. And what that person forgets—what I forget—is, well, imagine looking at your dog. I’ll give you two examples. Look at your dog, and if your dog said back to you, "Do you know what I’ve got to do today? Have you any idea how busy I am? Have you any idea what responsibilities I’ve got? Where’s my next walk coming from? Where’s my next meal coming from?" If your dog could speak, you’d look at it and say, "You have no idea how good you’ve got it." What you say is, "I’m in charge of that. I take care of all that, not you. You’ve forgotten who you are, dog. You’re getting above your station." That’s not a totally weird example. I think large parts of Job, using the animal kingdom, are to teach Job that if God were to tell him why he does what he does, Job wouldn’t understand. There are categories that God works in that human beings are just not built to understand. My knowledge of God is the same as my dog’s knowledge of me. We think God is just a bigger version of me when, actually, God is a different being altogether than me. So I’m taking a long time to give you hopefully a helpful, simple answer, which is when I feel anxious about tomorrow and anxious about what’s coming and anxious about the future, it’s like a dog saying to a human being, "You don’t know what you’re doing. Have I really got to run the world, dog walker? Have I got to sort it out?" We really don’t. We’re forgetting, in all the stress and worry and anxiety about tomorrow and about what’s coming, we’re forgetting that we are creatures who God has placed in this world for a short time to simply know him, love him, obey him, trust him, to accept—and this is another beautiful part of Ecclesiastes—to accept the good things in the world that he’s given us as gifts—food, drink, relationships, work—to enjoy them for what they are. The dog that buries a bone thinking, The entire future of the universe depends on me burying this bone, it is as silly as the president thinking the entire future of the universe depends on which button I press here. Of course it’s monumental. But it’s nothing like the grandness of what God is orchestrating and God is controlling. And the other image I’d use, not just dog and human, but parent and child. That’s the main thing, pastorally, I want to say to people who are really anxious about the future and anxious about control over their life. Your four-year-old child who says to you, "I’m really anxious about school tomorrow, mom, and what my friend is doing." That’s how life works, isn’t it? The parent looks at the child’s fears and knows how small they are compared to the parent’s fears. The parent can navigate the world in a way that the child can’t. And the parent says, "Look, don’t worry. I’m here, I’ve got this, put your hand in mine. I’ll walk with you through that." We’re so quick to forget that, aren’t we? I don’t know what you’re like, Matt. Me, myself as a pastor, my wife, my kids, our church family, if only I could get the doctrine of God deeper into my bones and into my heart, that a) he’s a different being from me, and secondly, he’s a father, not just a chess player. He’s not an orchestrator of events. He’s a loving father who loves me the same way that I love my kids and say to them at nighttime, "Let’s pray. God’s got this. I’ve got this." Does that make sense? That’s a very long-winded answer. You’ve probably even forgotten what the question was.
Matt Tully
No, absolutely. It makes me think of a subset of the broad category in just the uncertainty of life. We can look at our lives and see things happen to us that are out of our control, but one subset that is also maybe a focal point of our anxiety at times is decision making that we have to do. So every day we don’t have the option to not make decisions. It’s not as if this doctrine of God and the doctrine of humanity means that we just sit passively and let things happen. And sometimes it can just feel hard to know what decision to make. And I think especially of the situations where we are trying to make good, wise decisions, and yet things still don’t go as planned. We do what we’re called to do, we feel like faithfully, and yet the results just still go wrong. So how do you think about that? How should we as Christians understand our responsibility to make good decisions, to think carefully about the future, with our tendency to want to have control over the future?
David Gibson
I think what Ecclesiastes does is it injects into our decision making the unexpected decision-making help of death. The message of Ecclesiastes is life is a breath. The recurring phrase, "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Vanity of vanities." In the English Standard Version or the NIV, "Meaningless, meaningless. Everything is meaningless." The way to understand that, I think, the Hebrew word hevel is breath, mist, vapor, breath, breath, vapor, vapor. Everything is a vapor. Everything is misty. Everything is momentary. Everything is passing. Everything is fleeting. And Ecclesiastes says, if I could put it this way, Ecclesiastes says stick that in your decision making pipe and smoke it. Here I sit wrestling over this decision, and Ecclesiastes stands over my shoulder and says, "Come on, make up your mind. You don’t have long." And by that it means you’ve only got seventy years or eighty years. If you really know you’re here for a short time and you’re going to die, does that make any difference to the decision making? We never really think that, but you get the unexpected diagnosis that gives you six months to live. Very few people are cloudy in their decision making then. Things become incredibly clear very quickly about what matters most, about who you want to speak to, about what you want to put right, about where you want to go, what you’re going to do with your money. In Ecclesiastes, the whole point of the book is to say you don’t need that six-months-left diagnosis. I’m giving it to you now. You’ve got seventy years max, and look how quickly it’s going. I’m fifty, Matt, and yet in my head I’m twenty. It’s just passing like a Formula One race car. Life is flying by. So the whole point of the book, I think, is to say can you just stop and think about the fact that your grandparents are gone, and they were like you? And you don’t even know then names of your great-great grandparents. They’re here and they’re gone. So take it down deep, really deep, into your bones that when you go to that funeral and you look at the coffin, one day that will be you. And when someone stands to give the eulogy, what are they going to say about you? Today is your chance to change that. That’s one main thing, I think. Inject the reality of your death into your decision making. And then if I could just say one other thing, which is I think the book of Ecclesiastes says once you do that, once you pump your death into your veins and into your bloodstream and your mindset and everything, the very last thing it does is make you morbid. Death has that effect, doesn’t it? When people lose someone tragically, often what does the family do? They start running marathons, they climb mountains. The loss accelerates life, in some ways, and adds more life. If you can do that yourself for your own death in advance of your death, instead of becoming morbid, people like this become the most alive people that you can meet. They become incredibly generous with their money, with their time. That’s the second main thing I would say, that once you inject death into your mindset to help you make decisions, it won’t automatically tell you which fork in the road to go down, but it might help you think, Is one of these forks in the road more generous than the other? Is one going to serve others more than it serves me? It’s that kind of thing. That’s the difference that I think Ecclesiastes makes on our decision making.
Matt Tully
Another area of uncertainty that we face, another subcategory, is uncertainty in the midst of suffering. And Ecclesiastes does address this. It presents what I would say is a pretty brutally honest picture of suffering in a broken world that is oftentimes unavoidable for us. We live in the modern world where we have technology now that helps us to push some of this away. But ultimately, suffering, which culminates in death, is unavoidable for us. And sometimes it barges into our lives in very intense ways. So what comfort does this book offer to somebody who is experiencing deep suffering?
David Gibson
I think it operates on a few different levels. On the one hand, some people I know just simply find the sheer presence of Ecclesiastes comforting. Psalm 23 is, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." Ecclesiastes just takes time to describe that valley of the shadow of death. It’s quite comforting to read the Bible and to realize that the Bible is not fairytale land. It’s not make believe. It really knows the world that we live in. That in itself is comforting.
Matt Tully
We should take a moment, David, here just to briefly mention your book. You said Psalm 23, and you have another book that you’ve written with Crossway called The Lord of Psalm 23, where you walk through that incredible Psalm in a way that I’ve never heard anyone else do. And you really helped to explain both what that valley is but also the Lord who meets us there. Can you just share very briefly what you see in that psalm and even how it connects to Ecclesiastes?
David Gibson
I think the psalm, again, some people say that the comfort—Charles Spurgeon said this really famously—that the comfort of the psalm is realizing that in the valley of the shadow of death, the reason it’s only a shadow is because there must be light somewhere. So the Lord is there as light, and so the shadows aren’t really dangerous. And I don’t think that’s right. I think the point of the psalm, and David who wrote it, his own life experience is that valleys can be very, very dangerous, dark, bleak, crushing places. The psalm doesn’t try and deny that or pretend that that’s not like that. And, in fact, that’s what makes the psalm so beautiful, that the Lord is with us. Not to then, because he’s with us, that the valley of the shadow of death disappears. No, he’s with us in that valley, right there in the midst of it and in the thickest darkness. And I think Ecclesiastes is just like that. It doesn’t sugarcoat life. It doesn’t pretend and say, "Come to Jesus, and everything will be okay." That there are many people in many parts of the world that their life was fine until they came to Jesus, until they came to Christ, and then the suffering began, then the persecution began. So that’s that’s one level of comfort, to go back to your original question. Ecclesiastes is real, and there’s comfort in it being real. I think a second thing is that Ecclesiastes says that suffering comes to us in seasons. There are just times when these things roll into our lives that are unexpected. But because there is a time for these things, Ecclesiastes is very good at saying they’re not forever, they’re not always. Just like the four seasons of the year roll around, just like days and weeks and months roll around, so times of suffering that we think are going to go on forever, in God’s hands probably are simply a season that we’re going through, a rhythm that we’re in at the minute. The most important thing, though, where I get that from in chapter 3, the most important help that I have about suffering from Ecclesiastes is that even in that time of suffering, God is going to use it in some way to tell a bigger story than I can see in this particular time. So in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, we have "a time to be born, a time to die, a time to mourn, a time to dance." There is a season of suffering, in other words, that comes into all our lives. But then chapter 3, verse 11, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." That, I think, is the most incredible verse in the whole book. Everybody thinks of "meaningless, meaningless, vanity, vanities," but that verse is the most incredible verse, to think that God has made everything beautiful in its time. And I shudder at that. How can some things—Gaza, 9/11, Northern Ireland (where I grew up)—take your pick at what’s unfolding in the world. How on earth can it be beautiful? And the answer is, of course, it’s not beautiful to us, but it’s not beautiful to us because we don’t see it in its time. God is the one controlling all the times of the universe. My suffering, your suffering at this particular moment is no more meaningful or beautiful than opening Lord of the Rings halfway through and reading one particular sentence and saying, "This doesn’t make sense." It doesn’t make sense on its own there in that moment, but the whole story put together is beautiful. And I think that’s probably, ultimately, the most ultimate help in suffering, that my suffering is one moment in this unfolding story that has God taking care of sin, dealing with it once and for all in the death and resurrection of Christ his Son, the promise of a new world to come. Then we will see everything beautiful in its time.
Matt Tully
You titled this book Walking Through the Book of Ecclesiastes: Living Life Backward. I wonder if you could just, as a final question, help us understand what you’re getting at with that title.
David Gibson
I need to say what Crossway is getting out of that title. The funny thing with that title, Matt, is that I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. The book was called, in the United Kingdom, Destiny: Learning to Live by Preparing to Die. And you guys, folks at Crossway, are brilliant at titling books, and that title came back to me and I fought it and said no. And Crossway said, "No, trust us. It really is the right one." And I now agree completely. It’s an excellent distillation of the message of Ecclesiastes. And so the reason for it, I think, is this: we live life forwards, don’t we? That’s the normal thing. I sat on my calendar, and this morning my wife said, "What’s happening this week? What are we doing this evening?" The kids say what they’re doing. We’re plotting our life forward all the time. And if you just carry on like that, you just plot your life forward all the time and then bang, you’re dead. In some way, death comes. Ecclesiastes says how about we switch that around? Start with death, the fact that one day you’re going to die. That’s definitely coming. It really, really will happen. If you believe it and start to take that on board now, live backwards from that point. It’s the thing I mentioned earlier. Imagine the terminal diagnosis. You’ve got six months left to live. You’re going to live backwards from that. That cold, hard reality is going to shape everything you do in the next six months. And so Ecclesiastes says, "Well, I don’t know whether it’s six months or six years or sixteen years, but it’s coming. So take that point and work backwards into your life, and you’ll find that you live completely differently."
Matt Tully
And to be fair to you, even if we insisted on that title, we got that from your introduction where you talk about our tendency to live life forward, to want to live life forward, and yet the need to actually think backwards. Maybe actually as a final question, one other quick quote from the book. You say this perspective, starting with death and the end, "can teach us the meaning of mirth." I wonder if you could just close us with explaining what you mean by that.
David Gibson
Don’t you think that some of the most interesting people you’ve ever met, or some of the most delightful people to be around, are the people who don’t take themselves so seriously? In my work, I’ve had the privilege of meeting some really powerful people. I’ve met some incredibly powerful people—powerful in the world’s terms, in terms of politics, money, influence, capability. The world-at-their-feet kind of people. And there are some of those people that you just—I anyway—just didn’t really want to be around too long. These are big hitters, and, boy, do they know they’re big hitters in the world. But you see when you meet a person with immense power and immense reach and they just are so self-deprecating and they don’t take themselves seriously. They put you at ease. It is tremendous fun to be around people like that. So people who don’t take themselves seriously know how to laugh at themselves. When you realize you are a mist and that you’re only here for a short time and that the future of the world does not depend on the David Gibson project and my legacy. I’m a pastor, and I could go under a bus tomorrow and Trinity Church in Aberdeen will carry on just fine, because it’s God’s church not mine. You become someone who just relaxes and lets go of needing to be in charge of everything, needing to be in control of everything. And that’s the message of Ecclesiastes. Chapter 9: go enjoy your life with your wife, whom you love. Open a bottle of wine. Look after your body. Dress well. Eat well. Enjoy your work. That comes from death. It’s knowing that you’re going to die that teaches you how to laugh at yourself, how to not take yourself too seriously, how to enjoy the good things in life. That’s where I think the mirth comes from. I think that’s what it means.
Matt Tully
David, thank you so much for helping us take a book that I think can sometimes fill us with a little bit of anxiety, can feel unsettling to us and confusing, and hopefully helping each of us to understand a little bit better the freedom, the relief even, that comes from understanding not just who we are but ultimately who God is. We appreciate it.
David Gibson
You’re very welcome. It’s been a real pleasure. Lovely. Thank you.
Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.
Rosaria Butterfield encourages us to engage our LGBTQ neighbors for Christ, highlighting how God used the radically ordinary hospitality of Christians to draw her to himself.
I’m a parent of three young children (ages 6, 4, and 3) who are growing up in an age of ubiquitous screens. Like most parents in today’s world, I worry about how they’re being shaped by today’s technologies. Here are a few suggestions for practical ways Christian parents can encourage healthy spiritual formation in a scrolling age.
1. Mind what you’re modeling.
So much of how kids learn is caught, not taught. And it’s mostly caught by parents—a child’s primary models for life, from birth to adulthood. Parents in the scrolling age need to be mindful that it won’t work to tell your kids, “Get off your phone!” if you are constantly on your phone yourself. Do as you say. Let your words be reinforced by your own discipline. Ask yourself: Are you frequently filling every gap moment in your day with scrolling? At family meal times, are you on your device? Do you and your spouse put your phones away and engage one another in front of the kids, modeling relational presence rather than distracted half-attention? If your kids see mom and dad always tethered to their smartphone, they’ll naturally grow up assuming devices like this will be critically important for them too.
So work on your own habits, and let your actions speak as loudly as your words.
2. Place boundaries around devices.
Limits are not legalistic or cruel. They’re loving. If you put boundaries around your kids regarding how far away from home they can ride their bikes, or how many cookies they can eat for dessert, do you also put boundaries around the when, where, and what, and how long of screen usage? Arguably, the hazards of screens pose greater risks to your kids than bike-riding or cookie-eating. In his book, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt’s big point is that we tend to overprotect our kids in the “real world” and under protect them in the virtual world.
Consider these practical ideas for putting guardrails around your kids’ scrolling time:
Designate times during the day when screen time is allowed and when it isn’t. We let our kids watch a little TV while they have breakfast, and then usually after school for a bit while they have a snack. But in both cases, it’s a limited period and then it goes off.
Limit your kids’ media or scrolling activities to common rooms or areas where they can be closely monitored. Especially once they get older (but increasingly, even at very young ages), the things they are tempted to do on screens in bedrooms or private spaces are very dark and damaging.
If your kids have their own devices, consider device lockers or secure storage where they must be kept at certain times of the day.
3. Vet the voices.
So much of spiritual formation has to do with where we’re giving our attention. What feeds our minds feeds our souls, and what we give our limited attention to has profound power to shape us. Are you aware of the voices, podcasts, YouTube channels, and influencers your kids give their online attention to? Be proactive in vetting the media they consume, knowing it’s usually not a one-and-done but an ongoing process of being tuned in to what their watching and who they’re listening to.
4. Suggest alternative activities.
It’s a mistake to focus only on the “what you can’t do” aspect of digital habits. Parents need to creatively suggest “what to do instead” alternatives that are fun, compelling, and healthy for kids. We created a list that we put on our fridge, detailing about twenty ideas for activities not involving screens: reading books, doing puzzles, building a fort, playing with sensory bins, painting, board games, practicing Scripture memory, singing worship songs, hide and seek, etc. Yes, these activities can often lead to messes requiring cleanup. But protecting your kids is more important than protecting the house’s cleanliness. And part of protecting kids is helping them grow in analog wonder, boredom-fueled imagination, and tactile creativity. As Read Mercer Schuchardt argues in his chapter in Scrolling Ourselves to Death, we need to encourage young people to be tangible participants in life, not just scrolling spectators of it.
5. Get them outside!
Kids today need to know that the real world has always been, and will always be, more awesome than any virtual world. What they can see in the sky, and touch in the dirt, and smell in the garden will always be more interesting than what they can scroll through on their screens. Most kids have an ingrained curiosity that leads them to explore nature, climb trees, catch grasshoppers, and make mud pies. Let them. Encourage it.
Work on your own habits, and let your actions speak as loudly as your words.
God’s creation is an underrated source of Christian wisdom1, and time outside is something many experts note is crucial to childhood development2. So send your kids into the backyard for unsupervised play. Let them run around in local parks. Hike mountains as a family. Trek through forests. Go often to lakes, rivers, oceans. Look for wildlife. Plant whatever fruit trees, herbs, and vegetables that grow where you live. Be attuned to the seasons. Geek out over the weather. Encourage your kids to notice the real world around them, and teach them from a young age that this isn’t just random evolutionary happenstance; it’s our Father’s world. He created it intentionally, for his glory and our good.
6. Don’t beat yourself up.
I often feel guilty that I’m not doing any of the above things enough. Even as I write books about the importance of healthy habits in the digital age, my own family can sometimes be inconsistent. I’m sure most parents can relate. We realize we’re scrolling on Instagram while our kids shout, “Come play catch with me outside!” Or one of them gets to the point where they have to yell, “Daddy, get off your phone!” These are ouch moments. And they can be helpful, convicting wake-up calls.
But parents today shouldn’t expect perfection. And when you’re on a plane or long road trip, in a quiet public place, or at a nice restaurant, don’t stress if you temporarily ease up on screen time to keep the chaos contained. We’ve all been there. You’re not a bad parent if you break your own “rules” from time to time. In most cases, the norm matters more for our spiritual formation than the exceptions. Missing church once in a while isn’t a big deal if our long-term norm is weekly attendance. Going a few days without praying or reading your Bible isn’t detrimental if the norm of those habits is consistency.
The same is true for digital habits: aim for consistency, but don’t expect perfection. And above all, seek God’s guidance in the process. Pray for wisdom and discipline, but rest in his grace.
Brett McCracken is a senior editor for the Gospel Coalition and the author of The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World and Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community. He lives with his family in Southern California.
When you’re looking out into the realm of social media, it's easy to base your theological reflection not on what Scripture emphasizes, but on what social media wants to talk about.
Learn more about Pippa and the Singing Tree, an illustrated storybook by celebrated singer and hymn writer Kristyn Getty that inspires kids to lift their voices to the Lord.
April 14, 2025
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Pippa and the Singing Tree: Joining the Song of All Creation
The whole earth is a symphony to God. The universe echoes his glory, and believers harmonize with songs of adoration. In the illustrated book Pippa and the Singing Tree, singer and hymn writer Kristyn Getty teaches children how they can answer Scripture’s call to worship.
Playing outside one chilly autumn day, Pippa is surrounded by the sights and sounds of nature. The great trees, robins, and icy winds—depicted in charming lyrical prose—all witness to God’s majesty. Moved by the beauty around her, Pippa lifts her voice, adding her own song to the chorus.
Combining beauty and rhythm with artwork by P. J. Lynch, this story makes a great gift or church resource. In a special note at the end of the book, Getty shares some of her favorite psalms, along with prompts that will inspire kids to worship the Lord.
Written by Kristyn Getty: Grammy-nominated singer brings her lyrical talent to a book on worship
Illustrated Story for Ages 5–8: Rhythmic prose and beautiful illustrations capture kids’ imaginations
A Great Gift for Families and Churches: Perfect for story time or as a supplemental Sunday school resource
Learn more about Pippa and the Singing Tree today!
Does Monday morning excite you? If so, that’s great, but that’s not how many of us feel. Our jobs challenge us, exhaust us, and sometimes threaten to consume us.
Does Monday morning excite you? If so, that’s great, but that’s not how many of us feel. Our jobs challenge us, exhaust us, and sometimes threaten to consume us. So what does devotion to Jesus Christ look like in our workplace environments—whether they be cutthroat or mundane?
From small-town Virginia to the hustle of New York City, Tim Keller spent his life ministering to believers struggling with work. As he discovered and taught, how we work (and why) reveals our deepest values and dearest treasures.
According to Keller, work is not merely a way to earn money or a strategy for self-advancement or a necessary evil to fund truly important things like ministry. Work is a divine calling through which we honor our heavenly Master and love our neighbor in tangible ways.
Not long after Keller planted Redeemer, a soap-opera actor got converted and came to his new pastor asking, “What roles should—and shouldn’t—I take? I assume stories don’t have to be religious to be good for people, but how do I know which stories are good and which are bad?” He also wondered, “How should I think about method acting? This is where you don’t just act angry; you get angry. You tap into something within yourself and really live it. What’s your advice?” Though Keller had the wherewithal to reply to the second question by saying, “That doesn’t sound like a good idea,” he knew he was out of his depth. Despite years of formal theological training and ministry experience, he sensed a gap in his ability to form Christians for daily work. He knew how to encourage deeper involvement in church activities, but here was a young Christian wanting to be discipled for his public life. Years later, Keller would point to this interaction as an “epiphany” that propelled him to think more seriously about the integration of faith and work.1
Situating Your Job in a Story
Your vocation will make little sense to you unless you’ve situated it in a significantly larger story. What’s the purpose of my job? is too small a question to start with. We must first ask, What’s the purpose of my life? and, more fundamentally, What’s the purpose of the universe? Only when we’ve surveyed God’s ultimate plan for the world, as revealed in his word, will we duly grasp the implications for our work. This sweeping story unfolds in the major plot points of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Or, Keller notes, we can distill it in four chapters:2
Chapter 1
Where did we come from?
From God: the One and the relational
Chapter 2
Why did things go so wrong?
Because of sin: bondage and condemnation
Chapter 3
What will put things right?
Christ: incarnation, substitution, restoration
Chapter 4
How can I be put right?
Through faith: grace and trust
The Bible’s storyline presents an unfolding drama that powerfully resonates with our jobs:
Work was created good.
Work became corrupted by sin.
Work is being partly redeemed through the Holy Spirit.
Work will be fully redeemed when Jesus Christ makes all things new.
Work Is Created
The Bible begins with the most productive workweek of all time.3 That’s how we’re meant to think of it. Note the repetition:
And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Gen. 2:2–3)
The narrative then rewinds to focus on the sixth day. Though God was exceedingly pleased with his universe (Gen. 1:31), something was lacking: “There was no man to work the ground” (Gen. 2:5). So the Creator knelt down, as it were, to solve the problem:
Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. (Gen. 2:7–8)
Behold the King of glory, with his hands in the dirt.
No wonder the first image bearer was given a similar occupation: Adam was put “in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). And the job was too much for Adam to handle by himself: “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” (Gen. 2:18). Keller aptly contends, “We see God not only working, but commissioning workers to carry on his work. . . . Though [everything] was good, it was still to a great degree undeveloped. God left creation with deep untapped potential for cultivation that people were to unlock through their labor.”4
Could the Bible begin with a more exalted view of work?
Work Is Cursed
Yet by the time we finish the next chapter in Genesis, the story has become a tragedy. Following Adam and Eve’s rebellion, God pronounces a series of curses, including this:
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.” (Gen. 3:17–19)
Behold the King of glory, with his hands in the dirt.
Yet even after banishment from Eden—the original exile—Adam retains his vocation: “The Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken” (Gen. 3:23). But work has now become toil. As the father of Noah says, looking at his newborn son, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Gen. 5:29).
In one sense, the whole ensuing story of the Bible is about the promise of a royal deliverer who will end the exile and heal the world, bringing relief to our toil and everlasting rest to our souls. But what about the meantime? The curse remains. The exile persists. Thorns and thistles threaten to sabotage even our best efforts. Even thoughthe kingdom of God has made a personal appearance on earth in the person of Jesus Christ, we still await the renewal and restoration of all things—including the gift of work.5
The iconic words of Isaac Watts may put you in the Christmas spirit, but they are actually about the joy to come at the King’s return:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as the curse is found.6
Dignity of All Work
On the topic of work, Keller invoked no one more often than Martin Luther. The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformer, having reclaimedm the biblical truth of the priesthood of all believers, loved to highlight the nobility of all human work—no matter how menial:
[Luther] mounted a polemic against the view of vocation prevalent in the medieval church. The church at that time understood itself as the entirety of God’s kingdom on earth, and therefore only work in and for the church could qualify as God’s work. This meant that the only way to be called by God into service was as a monk, priest, or nun. . . . [Secular labor was] akin to the demeaning necessity that the Greeks saw in manual labor. Luther attacked this idea forcefully.7
Indeed, in his expositions of the Psalms, Luther observed that God cares for his creation not directly but indirectly—through our work. Consider, for example, Psalm 145:
The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open your hand;
you satisfy the desire of every living thing. (Ps. 145:15–16)
But how does God feed us? It is not as if heavenly manna plops onto our plates. No, he works through human workers—farmers, drivers, bakers, grocers, and countless others along the way—to provide the food that now sits in your refrigerator or pantry.8 We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11), and God answers by dispatching people to their jobs.
Even in the smallest tasks, the Lord Almighty is working through our work. The implications of this teaching, once they sink in, are explosive. Keller reflects,
Not only are the most modest jobs—like plowing a field or digging a ditch—the “masks” through which God cares for us, but so are the most basic social roles and tasks, such as voting, participating in public institutions, and being a father or mother. These are all God’s callings, all ways of doing God’s work in the world, all ways through which God distributes his gifts to us. Even the humblest farm girl is fulfilling God’s calling. As Luther preached, “God milks the cows through the vocation of the milkmaids.”9
In one of his first sermons at Redeemer, Keller explained it like this:
The glorious teaching of the Bible is you can be a person on an assembly line, you can be just turning a screw, you can be somebody who’s just sweeping a floor—but if you see it as part of the whole complex way God has enabled us to bring the potential out of his creation—then you can do it with joy. Paul was writing to slaves [in Ephesians 6:5–8], and if this theology can work for slaves—if he can say, “Slaves, the menial work you do, you do it for the Lord”—[then you too can] see it as part of everything God made work to be, [and] you can do it with joy.10
Though today we tend to think of vocation and job as synonyms, the former word is far richer. Based on the Latin vocare (“to call”), it means nothing less than a calling—an assignment to serve others—whether you work on one side of the political aisle or in the produce aisle.
And these assignments come ultimately from the sovereign throne of a working God. What could possibly infuse more nobility into an ordinary job? “In Genesis we see God as a gardener, and in the New Testament we see him as a carpenter. No task is too small a vessel to hold the immense dignity of work given by God.”11
Notes:
Tim Keller, “Why Tim Keller Wants You to Stay in That Job You Hate,” interviewed
by Andy Crouch, Christianity Today, April 22, 2013, https:// www .christianity today.com/ (emphasis added). The quote has been lightly edited for clarity. Keller also relates the actor anecdote in “The Dream of the Kingdom,” preached on April 30, 2000, and in a panel discussion at the 2006 Desiring God National Conference. See John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, and JustinTaylor, “A Conversation with the Pastors,” September 29, 2006, https:// www .desiring god .org/.
Timothy Keller, Shaped by the Gospel: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 34–43, chart on 36. Elsewhere he writes, “Without an understanding of the gospel [story], we will be either naïvely utopian or cynically disillusioned. We will be demonizing something that isn’t bad enough to explain the mess we are in; and we will be idolizing something that isn’t powerful enough to get us out of it. This is, in the end, what all other worldviews do.” Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, with Katherine Leary Alsdorf (New York: Penguin, 2012), 161. He then sketches some biblical implications for a few fields of work: business (164–68), journalism (169–70), higher education (171–73), the arts (173–75), and medicine (175–80).
Keller comments, “The Bible begins talking about work as soon as it begins talking about anything—that is how important and basic it is.” Keller, Every GoodEndeavor, 19.
Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 22.
Keller had little patience for a triumphalist perspective on work: “[We must settle] one sure fact: Nothing will be put perfectly right . . . until the ‘day of Christ’ at the end of history (Phil. 1:6; 3:12). Until then all creation ‘groans’ (Rom. 8:22) and is subject to decay and weakness. So work will be put completely right only when heaven is reunited with earth and we find ourselves in our ‘true country.’ To talk about fully redeeming work is sometimes naïvete, sometimes hubris.” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 150–51 (emphasis original).
Isaac Watts (1674–1748), “Joy to the World” (1719), Hymnary.org.
Keller,Every Good Endeavor, 58. He also remarks, “While the Greek thinkers saw ordinary work, especially manual labor, as relegating human beings to the animal level, the Bible sees all work as distinguishing human beings from animals and elevating them to a place of dignity. Old Testament scholar Victor Hamilton notes that in surrounding cultures such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, the king or others of royal blood might be called the ‘image of God’; but, he notes, that rarefied term ‘was not applied to the canal digger or to the mason who worked on the ziggurat. . . . [But Genesis 1 uses] royal language to describe simply ‘man.’ In God’s eyes all of mankind is royal. The Bible democratizes the royalistic and exclusivistic concepts of the nations that surrounded Israel.” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 36. Keller cites V. P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 135.
One implication of this, of course, is that we should appreciate many contributions from nonbelievers. Since culture is a complex cocktail of “brilliant truth, marred half-truths, and overt resistance to the truth,” in our workplaces we should expect to see real darkness punctuated by flashes of God’s common grace. Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 198. Moreover, “The doctrine of sin means that believers are never as good as our true worldview should make us. Similarly, the doctrine of grace means that unbelievers are never as messed up as their false worldview should make them. . . . Ultimately, a grasp of the gospel and of biblical teaching on cultural engagement should lead Christians to be the most appreciative of the hands of God behind the work of our colleagues and neighbors.” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 195, 197. He also suggests, “Christians who understand biblical doctrine ought to be the ones who appreciate the work of non-Christians the most. We know we are saved by grace alone, and therefore we are not [necessarily] better fathers or mothers, better artists and businesspersons, than those who do not believe as we do. Our gospel-trained eyes can see the world ablaze with the glory of God’s work through the people he has created and called—in everything from the simplest actions, such as milking a cow, to the most brilliant artistic or historic achievements.” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 64.
Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 61. The Luther quote is paraphrased from Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 21, Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat, ed. J. Pelikan (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1958), 237. According to Psalm 147, God “strengthens the bars of your gates” (147:13) and “makes peace in your borders” (147:14). In other words, he provides safety and security for a city through lawmakers, law enforcement, military personnel, those working in government and politics, and so on.
Tim Keller, “Feeling His Pleasure,” preached on October 22, 1989. Keller clarifies, “Slavery in the Greco-Roman world was not the same as the New World institution that developed in the wake of the African slave trade. Slavery in Paul’s time was not race-based and was seldom lifelong. It was more like what we would call Tim indentured servitude. But for our purposes . . . consider this: If slave owners are told they must not manage workers in pride and through fear, how much more should this be true of employers today? And if slaves are told it is possible to find satisfaction and meaning in their work, how much more should this be true of
workers today?” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 219 (emphasis original).
Matt Smethurst is lead pastor of River City Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of several books, including Tim Keller on the Christian Life; Before You Open Your Bible; Before You Share Your Faith; and Deacons. He also cohosts, with Ligon Duncan, The Everyday Pastor podcast from the Gospel Coalition. Matt and his wife, Maghan, have five children.
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